


Let the Secret Fires

by Anonymous



Category: Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: M/M, roadtrip, romantic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-06-04
Updated: 2009-06-04
Packaged: 2017-10-02 10:00:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Let's swim to the moon, let's climb through the tide, penetrate the evenin' that the city sleeps to hide, let's swim out tonight, love, it's our turn to try, parked beside the ocean on our moonlight drive. ~The Doors, Moonlight Drive</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Let the Secret Fires

**Author's Note:**

> This was going to be written for [Jassy](http://jasmineskie.livejournal.com)'s birthday; then [Caryn](http://carynita.livejournal.com)'s; by now, it is a present for fandom as a whole. [Dove](http://hija_paloma.livejournal.com) and [Elanna](http://elanna9.livejournal.com) put the tape on the wrapping paper and tied all the bows, which is to say they did stellar beta duty.

"You get what you get," Orlando said, once, dreamily, floating on a raft in Viggo's pool.

Viggo glanced up from Henry's American Lit textbook, where he was shaking his head over the carefully bland, politically correct notes on Mark Twain. Henry had left it on the deck table the night before, when he had been distracted by food in favor of homework. "You been going off to AA meetings?" he asked. Orlando chuckled and didn't answer until he had drifted close enough to the pool's wall to catch his foot in the ladder.

"You get what you get," he said again, eyes still shut, "but sometimes you get more by giving it away. Sometimes you only get it, all the way, when it isn't fully yours."

Viggo turned a page. "Sharing is caring," he said solemnly.

"Oh, shut up."

The next day, Viggo was sorting through the mail when the phone rang. He didn't even get to say hello before Orlando blurted out, "I want to make it a real gift."

"Hi, Orlando."

"Oh, fuck me, you've no idea of what I'm on about, have you?"

"I could fake it," Viggo offered, ripping a credit card offer in half.

There was silence on the other end for a few moments, and then Orlando said, more quietly, "Please don't."

Viggo put down the L.L. Bean catalog he had just opened. "Your meeting went okay?" he asked, glancing across the kitchen to where his shoes were drying from Brigit's morning walk in the rain.

"Yeah. Aleen has a Russell Crowe crisis, so I have a little bit." Orlando sighed, sounding oddly tired for eleven in the morning; but then, the details of his career, the ones he paid people to deal with, were mind-dullingly intricate. "He hit on a reporter. How stupid do you have to be to hit on a reporter?"

"There are reporters attractive enough to hit on?"

Orlando laughed at that, an honest-to-goodness laugh, and Viggo felt the tension in his thighs ease at the crackle of the sound over the phone. "Don't know, don't care," he said, "but I do have something I'd rather be telling you about than Crowe's latest."

"Yeah?" He pushed the stacks of recyclables and to-be-read-later-yes-really away and stood up, going to lean against the jamb of the kitchen door, letting the sunlight warm his eyes and Orlando's voice warm his heart.

It had been Orlando's voice that Viggo had encountered first; New Zealand had been a dizzying, confusing blur of faces and people at first. Even Peter Jackson had required concentration to recognize, but Orlando — he hadn't even seen Orlando, just heard him. Heard him talking, and then heard him break out into laughter, and felt himself smile in response to that clear, easy mirth. "Who's that?" he had asked, although the last thing he wanted was more names and people and characteristics.

"Orlando," the AD — Carrie? Cathy? Something like that — who was showing him around had said. "Want to meet him?"

"Tomorrow's time enough," Viggo had told her, fatigue once again making his bones leaden.

"Sure," she'd said, her Kiwi accent rounding the vowel, "he plays Legolas, you'll be seeing him often."

He had, just not for a few days, and when he had (at last) (how had he waited so long, he'd never understand it), it had been Orlando's voice and laughter that had made the dark lashes and smudged-shadowed eyes and scent of mint and lemon into a person. It was how he always thought of Orlando then, laughing in an herb garden, citrus trees shadowing his face.

He met Orlando laughing, and it seemed how Orlando should always be — happy and joyous and open, even if concealed and invisible. He saw Orlando in other ways, later, a veritable kaleidoscope of moods and gestures, but the most vivid was Orlando laughing.

"I don't know," he said now, brows bunching, though something within him was, as always, soothed and calmed by Orlando's voice, by listening to him talk about his grandiose plan. The garden out back was just beginning to show green, runner beans snaking up the splintery poles, and he propped the door open on his foot to get a glimpse of the damp, dark soil, the color of Orlando's eyes. "It's not really my kind of thing."

"It isn't an it," Orlando said, "it's several its."

"What the hell does that mean?"

"It means we have options."

"We have the option not to do this insane idea of yours."

"That's not an option. Shut up and let me talk." Viggo grinned, eyes opening, and he began to move, in small circles at first -- back to the table, over to the fridge, always returning to the lopsided rectangle of sunlight on the floor; until he reached the doorway to the living room and left the warm, sweet-smelling kitchen to plunge into the darker, more cluttered, interior rooms. It might be his house, but that didn't mean all rooms were equal (or if it did, some were more equal than others); the living room was where Henry and his friends hung out, and had been clearly delineated as Henry's territory. "We can play travel-the-world-blind—"

"Orlando, you're not seriously suggesting that we blindfold ourselves and start driving, are you?"

"Viggo, what part of shut up did you not understand?" Viggo grinned, hearing the smile in Orlando's voice, and settled onto the couch, briefly glad that Henry had insisted on the cordless phone over the wonderfully tacky seventies model.

This conversation would absorb all of the precious free time Orlando had been left with; in public, Orlando had learned restraint, to curb his tongue, to slow down. In private, he still let his mouth run away with him. It wasn't a bad thing. It was an Orlando thing, and that made it okay. But it made getting to the point a long, circuitous process, not that Viggo minded. He liked, hell, loved, Orlando's voice, the deep tenor of it, the way the vowels sang against his tongue, the way Orlando was always promising him forever in the most mundane of phrases.

"As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted," Orlando continued, "we could just wander, staying in crappy motels and sleeping in the car and leaving the maps at home. We could let someone else decide where we're going to spend the weekends over the next few months, and hope they're not idiots."

Viggo snorted, and this time Orlando didn't chide him. "Yeah, I know. That's why we're not considering that. But we could, in theory."

"Next option, Orlando?"

"Right. Next option. This is the one I like."

"Oh Jesus."

"Oh, be quiet," Orlando said. "We're going to do this, and bitching isn't going to change my mind. After the Oscars, we are using that gift bag for all it's worth."

"Orlando, telling me what we're going to do is not presenting options. That's shanghaiing me." He stretched out on the couch, rubbing the soles of his feet against the nubbly afghan that lay in sloppy folds and puddled, rusty colors. Orlando had bought the blanket during shooting Troy, when he had woken Sean up at four in the morning and taken him for a drive to a coastal village Viggo had told him about.

Sean had called that night and left a message that was almost completely incomprehensible for the slurring of his accent with fatigue and the amount of Sheffield profanity it was laced with. Viggo had kept the message, had asked Orlando to translate it when he came back; Orlando had flushed crimson and kissed him hard. "S'all lies," he'd said. "Vicious slander."

"Is that a word?" Orlando demanded now, from the other side of Los Angeles.

"Yeah, sure. It's a city. In China. Like your name, except not in Florida."

"Viggo —"

"Title of the genderfuck novel, Charlemagne's nephew, who was, by the way, even gayer than you, the composer who wasn't the historian Gibbons, you..."

"Yeah, the latest and greatest."

"Best ass, that's for sure."

Orlando snorted. "You could give me a — stop distracting me," he said. "Let me finish, please?" He didn't sound truly annoyed; his voice lacked the brittle edge it got when he was frustrated or anxious, and Viggo settled into the squashy cushions, propping the phone between his cheek and the back of the couch.

"Yeah, sorry."

"S'okay."

"So, the shanghai?" Viggo prompted.

"Yeah, the shanghai. Are you sure that's a word?"

"Positive. And you admit you're shanghaiing me into this?"

"No, I don't, would you shut up with the shanghai already?"

"Yes, of course, dear," Viggo drawled, and Orlando hiccupped with laughter. Making Orlando laugh was unquestionably the best thing ever, better than perfectly-steeped maté, better than a ride across rough country. He grinned, and knowing that Orlando would be able to hear it in his voice, added, "Shall I leave you a casserole when you work late, sweetheart? I know how tired you must be after such a long day—" but was unable to finish, laughing too hard.

"Shut up," Orlando gasped. "Look, since I probably won't get done with all the reasons you don't do stuff like this until, like, three in the morning, I figured we could sneak out of the city while the paps are trying to get pictures of various Oscar winners in various states of inebriation."

Viggo started pulling on a loose thread on the couch cushions; it came loose easily, and the fabric, worn thin, dimpled, almost like skin. As the thread began to cut into his fingers, he let go of it and started tugging lightly on the loose webbing between his fingers. "And go where, somewhere pointedly discreet?" he asked, letting his skepticism leak into his voice. He'd never seen the appeal of places where the staff didn't look you in the eye and, in fact, got in trouble if they're friendly in a more-than-automatic way. He hated when chocolate just appeared on his pillow and he didn't think anyone had been in his room.

"Go somewhere we don't leave the room and no one minds," Orlando corrected. Orlando had long since learned spin; The Firm had taught him well. "I thought we'd have to stay in California for a while, 'cause I've got rehearsals and filming for Chest in L.A. for the next month, and then I've got a week off while Johnny and Keira do their big green-screen, and we can go to New York for opening day and hit South Carolina on my way down to the Caribbean."

Viggo blinked. "You're serious about this, aren't you?"

"Yeah. Look, I love we get to live together, be normal and ordinary and boring while I'm in L.A., I love it, but I really did like sneaking off with you for weekends. I want to escape again. Live it up a little."

"Henry —"

"Spends his weekends at Dean's or Margaret's, and you know it, and he's perfectly capable of spending two days alone in the house without burning it down and you know that, too."

"Don't know how he'll get into college," Viggo muttered, sitting up and catching the phone as it wobbled. "He can't possibly study if he's at friends' houses every time he has more than a few hours to do his work in."

"He'll get into uni if he wants to go," Orlando said patiently. "After this month, I have an insane schedule for the rest of the year (yes, I know, I'm overcommitted and need to be committed, I don't have to take every job I'm offered, I get it) and I want some good memories to carry with me. Come on. It'll be fun."

Viggo sighed. Henry's guitar was propped against the coffee table, and he leaned forward to pull it onto his lap and strum a few chords—G-minor and A-major, his favorites. He could see his reflection in the TV screen, a grey ghost in a silver room. "Fun?"

"Hang on a sec, let me get the notes I made when Robin told me what was in the gift bag. You don't mind?" Orlando said, and Viggo could hear rustling paper in the background. Orlando had a habit of doing things in bits and pieces and scribbling his notes on different pieces of scrap paper.

It was probably that he could never refuse an interruption, but then, when Viggo gave him a notebook of handmade paper on Christmas, he'd pulled his upper lip into his mouth and looked dubious, after saying "thank you."

"What's up?"

"Um. Notebooks kind of scare me."

"Scare you?" Viggo had asked, raising both eyebrows.

"Well, the dyslexia? That many words all together kind of confuses me. I have to concentrate a little too hard, even if it's my own handwriting."

"Oh," Viggo had said, and Orlando had laughed and leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.

"Thank you," he'd said. "You couldn't know, and it's beautiful. And I know how much you treasure your notebooks."

"I don't mind," Viggo said, adjusting the tension of the D string and plucking it carefully, his head cocked. "You're right, it's been a while since it's been just us. Out of curiosity, how many pieces of paper do you have there?"

"You don't want to know," Orlando admitted. "Seven." He paused. "Okay, a dozen. Here we go, and don't laugh, I had to do this in between taking care of a million other things, Kate's contract and arranging for the Kingdom junket and I don't know what else. Okay, this week, since I have the day after the awards and the weekend off, and Henry's at his mum's, I thought we could go to the Spanish place, with the name I can't pronounce. Three nights is about right before we get cabin fever, yeah?"

"Three nights, and you claim we're not leaving the room, and you won't have cabin fever? What were you planning to do, play Tig?"

"I was thinking more like lots of blowjobs," Orlando said, his voice dropping a half-octave. "I might even go so far as to say BJODs."

Viggo groaned and closed his eyes, his hand on the guitar strings stilling. "I don't want to know what that means, do I?" he mumbled.

"Blow jobs on demand, innocent old pervert that you are," Orlando said.

"Oh."

"Yes."

"And then?"

"And then," Orlando said grandly, "and then, you can have more blowjobs."

"That's it?"

"Hey! Are you impugning my blowjob skills?"

"Keep it down, Orlando. That would make a great headline," he said as he stood up and stretched—well, not his kinks—his back out.

"Oh, aren't you sweet," Orlando grumbled, getting into it, "First you insult my splendid blowjobs and then you don't reassure me. I've half a mind to dump your amazing arse and go find some bloke who'd properly appreciate me."

"Mmmm," Viggo said, turning toward the patch of brightness of the door to the back deck at the end of the hallway. "Sounds like you're turning into a regular Hollywood heartbreaker."

"Love 'em and leave 'em, that's me, ladies' man extraordinaire," Orlando agreed. "Very debonair. Very young James Bond. Besides, I think a good sex scandal would be—well, hideous, actually." He sighed. "Be unfair on you and Henry, too."

"Yeah. And it's not like it'd be fun for you, either. I caught enough of it with Gwyneth back in the day. You can give that rite of passage a miss." He had been meandering down the hallway, fingers tracing the pattern of the wallpaper, and when he reached the bathroom, he knocked the door open with his elbow and stepped in, turning on the cold-water faucet and fumbling for the toothpaste cup. "Just worried about your jaw," he said, fingers closing around Orlando's pain pills on the top shelf, their location a remnant of Henry's childhood, when anything dangerous was kept out of his reach—then he grew six inches in a year and that strategy went straight to hell. "If the blowjobs are all that happens, the joint'll get pretty sore."

He put the medication back, and found, next, Orlando's moisturizer. The list of ingredients sounded like the names of lost Roman cities, or colonies on Mars: Paraffinum Liquidum, Elaeis Guineesis, Carbomer, Allantoin. Orlando hadn't said anything for a few seconds. "You there?"

"Yeah. Um. Will doesn't have that much dialogue?"

"And how well do you know your lines?"

"Not funny."

"Sorry."

"I'm sure we'll be able to reach an equitable compromise," Orlando said smoothly. "One with which all parties involved will be in agreement, and which won't cause undue stress on any one person's part."

"Aleen back?"

"No. But she will be. I should look busy."

"Jesus is coming," Viggo said.

"Zactly. I'll tell you the rest of it when you're in no position to object."

"Gonna fuck me through the mattress?" Viggo guessed, holding the cup under the faucet.

"Gonna make you wait," Orlando said, and he dropped the cup.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there are blowjobs on demand. Sort of.

"Cottage, sweet cottage," Orlando said happily, flopping onto the pale-green bedspread. He rolled over and rested his cheek against one of the embroidered roses, feeling it catch the short hairs at his jaw. The curtains were drawn back, and the young woman who had led him to the Gardenia Cottage smiled; she had been easy to charm, even sleep-deprived and wired as Orlando knew he was at the moment, and he rather hoped she would leave before he crashed. She set Orlando's duffels bags down on the luggage stands at the foot of the double bed.

Viggo had been sprawled on the bed when they came in, his bare feet up on the wall over the headboard, and he sat up on his elbows.

Orlando was still dressed in his tux, although he'd opened the collar and removed his tie, and his gelled hair fell in messy waves around his temples. He flicked a loose strand out of his eyes, and rubbed his forehead, letting out a breath. His eyes burned, still, from the bright lights of the stage, even after being driven ninety miles in the dark.

"Breakfast is from seven-thirty to ten-thirty," she said, as she adjusted the patio door. Orlando knew it looked out on an expanse of lush forest; she had assured him that the butterflies were coming back, and that he'd likely encounter them if he went for a walk through the resort's grounds. "The spa and athletic facilities open at nine, and the desk is staffed twenty-four hours a day, extension one-oh-one."

"Thank you," Viggo mumbled, his eyes fixed on Orlando's squirming. Orlando grinned and let his knees fall open.

"Would you like a wake-up call?"

Orlando hummed, let his eyes fall shut, and lifted one lid to peer at her. "Abso-fucking-lutely not, thanks."

She didn't even blink, just nodded and left, saying good night quietly, and the door shut behind her. Orlando groaned blissfully as he pressed his spine against the mattress. "God, that feels good," he said. He straightened his legs, lengthening the muscles, arching his feet, digging his heels into the blanket and tipping his head back.

"Tease," Viggo said.

"What?" Orlando let his arched back flatten and blinked innocently. "My back hurts."

"Tease," Viggo said firmly. "Also, you smell."

Orlando stared for a moment, and sat up, starting to fiddle with the buttons on his shirt. His tie had been stuffed into a jacket pocket, ruining the sleek line of the suit, hours before. His fingers, shifting restlessly against the white expanse of his chest, were the only movement in the room. "Uh, Viggo, we're not in primary school any longer," he said. "You don't have to pull my pigtails to tell me you like me."

"I am trying to get you naked. And wet. And did I mention naked?"

"Oh, well, then. Insult me as you wish. You said I smell?"

"You smell," Viggo said, breath catching at the way Orlando was exposing his chest, inch by inch, fabric opening, skin gleaming in the florescent light. "And you're ugly."

Orlando choked on a yawn.

"I ever mention my fantasy having you blow me with lipstick on?" Orlando's breath caught and his eyes widened. His hands were still, for a moment, and then he popped another button. "And eyeliner," Viggo added, his voice quieter. "Eyes dark and alluring, mouth red as blood or wine, and your skin, soul snug in that golden sheath. Hands cold on my thighs, breath warm over me, and your eyes looking at me, dark room, light sidling through gapped curtains."

"And you can lie there and call me a tease," Orlando mumbled.

"I can, indeed."

"Knackered, lover," Orlando said. "Unless you want me falling asleep on your cock, restrain your decadent, wicked fantasies for a few hours?"

Viggo leaned over and tugged Orlando up off the bed, letting him drape his weight against him. He bit the lobe of Orlando's ear lightly and whispered, "What happened to the blow jobs on demand?"

"What happened to your concern for my jaw?"

"Hmmm," Viggo said, placing kisses on the freckles on Orlando's neck. "Considerate boyfriend, versus you on your knees. Boyfriend….blowjob. Blowjob…boyfriend."

"Knackered," Orlando repeated. It was four-thirty in the morning, and he had been awake since nine the day before — minus a few hours to nap on the dressing room couch at the Awards, and he felt a brief spurt of annoyance. Viggo didn't understand, couldn't understand how much work the Oscars were. Viggo deliberately avoided commitments like that, and it worked for him; but Orlando wanted a different career than the one Viggo had had.

"No, you're not," Viggo said, licking the side of his neck. "You will be later. Right now, you're exhausted. In the morning, I intend to wake you up with oversugared tea and omelets with jam. Then I'm going to have your sweet mouth — don't look at me like that, there's a reason I mentioned the sugar and the jam — suck me off. And then you're going to lick me clean."

"Second breakfast," Orlando murmured, his head dropping back onto Viggo's shoulder.

"You're not a hobbit," Viggo pointed out. "You are, however, asleep on your feet."

"Din't have feet. Had ears. 'N contacts. Fucking hurt, those bastard things."

"Orlando. Get undressed. Take a shower. And come to bed."

"Don't you want to take a shower with me? What happened to wet and naked and naked?" Orlando tried the sulky expression that worked wonders on Elijah, but then Elijah — well, Elijah had his own variation, with the eyes and the lashes, and it always worked on Orlando. Never on Viggo. Perhaps there was an object lesson there, he thought drowsily, and turned his head to lick Viggo's cheek.

"You’re disgusting," Viggo said, and started walking Orlando over to the bathroom.

"Ooooh, use me, abuse me," Orlando said, and started giggling. He was exhausted, and Viggo's warmth was seeping through his clothing and into his bones, and he felt rubbery all through.

"Orlando, please, don't start singing, not at half-past four in the morning."

"I," Orlando said loftily, "have a voice that makes girls young enough to be my children give up their parents' money for, um, something." He was still giggling, and stumbled over the doorway, clutching at Viggo for a moment. "Have I mentioned you're really fit?" He started carefully investigating the hidden contours of his boyfriend's body, which he had long ago mapped with his mouth and hands and eyes, and found that the planes of muscles were almost better under cloth, because he had to imagine and remember them, rather than having the reality, simple and blunt and sweaty, under his lips.

Almost.

But that was still pretty damn good.

"Oh Jesus. Strip."

"You're not going to help?" Orlando asked, as he leaned against the sink, tugging on the fly of his trousers. The zipper slid down smoothly, and he let the fabric flop open around his hips. "Come on, you know you want to, strip me down and expose me to your gaze, touch everything revealed, press your hips—" he broke off, yawning, and yanked futilely at his sleeves. "Why did I put in cufflinks, goddammit?"

He gave up on the cufflinks, his fingers clumsy against the small silver squares, and turned his attention lower, saying, "The clothes are nice, yeah, but you know you want what's under the clothes, any way you can get it, and you get it every way. Everything you'd see under the clothes, 'sall yours, you get to see it and touch it and I let you, because you're allowed and you know it, I want you to, you know how much I want it. You know how it feels, it feels…" He trailed off, and for a moment, the bathroom was quiet.

"Amazing," he said softly.

He saw, through his lashes, that Viggo had covered his face with his hands, and Orlando tipped his head back, leaving his leg propped up on the loo seat, and his fingers hooked into his waistband. "Yeah," he said, "you know, you know me, you know what I need, what I am—"

"I know who you are."

"You know," Orlando said, opening his eyes. The tenor of the conversation had shifted, and he blinked, trying to wake his sluggish brain. "You — you love me."

"Yeah," Viggo said. "Smelly and filthy and hideous and messy and sleep-deprived."

"'S you."

"Oh, for — Orlando. I love you. You love me. Can we stop being sentimental now and get wet and naked and did I mention naked? And then sleep, for fuck's sake?"

Orlando laughed, and kicked his trousers across the floor. "Should hang those up," he said, as Viggo turned on the water. "Kick my arse if'n they get wrinkled."

"The designer?"

"Yeah."

"The suit's too small, you should kick theirs."

"You noticed the suit was too small?" Orlando asked in surprise, looking up. The light was dim enough, spilling in through the open door from the single lamp in the main bedroom, that he didn't have to squint, and it softened the small imperfections in Viggo's skin. He'd taken off his T-shirt, and Orlando forgot to continue undressing as he watched the muscles in his bare chest flex.

"I might have mentioned that I'm in love with you," Viggo said, popping the button on his jeans as he spoke. "I notice everything about you. Every inch of your body."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

He did, Orlando decided, as Viggo's hands moved all over him, leaving trails of soap bubbles in their wake. He could feel the roughness of Viggo's palms — calluses and the sharpness of the bones underneath them, but every touch was careful and soft, and he sighed with contentment. The thud of his head against the tiles of the shower wall as he let every bit of the tension ease out of his muscles made Viggo pause, and the dull throb of his skull made his whole body thrum, and he managed to find Viggo's cheek with his palm. "Don't stop," he tried to say, but it came out more like, "Dostip," and Viggo snorted, air puffing over the tangle of blood vessels in the crease of his thigh.

"You're going to slip and crack your head open," he said as he stood. Orlando's eyes had remained firmly shut, but the angle of warm water cascading over him changed, and he guessed that Viggo had taken the showerhead down and was rinsing the soap off his skin.

The rest of the night — morning — Orlando never remembered fully, just the scrape of velvet terrycloth against his skin, and the sudden weight of darkness as Viggo turned off the light, and the warm, damp feel of Viggo's breath stirring the fine hairs at the nape of his neck.

They didn't leave the room for three days.

Orlando decided that the patio counted as 'the room', and they fucked against the railing, with the scent of the newly-blooming lilies in the boxes all around them, twice. Once at high noon, to satisfy Orlando's demands for some decent risk in this ridiculously easy and risk-free getaway, once at sunset, when the last, dying rays of sunlight turned Viggo's skin a tawny gold and his hair a fiery nimbus. Orlando knelt in front of him, and thought vaguely of sun gods, the chariot of Apollo tumbling through the sky, scorching the earth, and gilded statues defiled by mortals, and then Viggo's breath caught and he focused his attention on the thick, salty taste in his mouth and the way Viggo's fingers rested against his cheek and the stutter of Viggo's pulse in the vein under his tongue.

When they drove back, the road was bordered by the beginnings of green at the tops of the bare rock hills, and the world was swathed in dark bands of shadow. The hiss of tires on the road sounded like opportunities lost, which Orlando knew was stupid—he had every chance he'd ever wanted, and many he hadn’t.

The ocean was just barely visible out the windows, but when he rolled down the glass, the smell of salt and dampness, like skin and sweaty palms, was almost overwhelming. Orlando fell asleep with the wind pressing the tears back behind his eyes, waking only when Viggo began swearing in Spanish at the LA-area traffic.

"I don't want to be back," he said, interrupting a particularly colorful phrase, something involving a driver who had just crossed three lanes of traffic, a chicken, and something that sounded pretty anatomically impossible, if his translation was accurate.

Viggo glanced at him. "We're leaving again on Friday evening," he reminded Orlando, and it was clear that he too was already anticipating being able to be with Orlando, and not behind familiar walls; they would still be in a cage, a cage they had chosen and understood was a cage, but it would look, briefly, different.

"But that's not 'till Friday," Orlando groaned. "And I don't know my lines for tomorrow, shut up, they're giving us rewrites, I bet you anything, so it doesn't matter."

"Everything matters," Viggo said. "Oh, goddamit, signal, you sonofabitch!"

"Not if it never sees the light of day," Orlando said. The landscape outside the car was cluttered with outlet malls and signs for organic farms; he fidgeted as he watched them speed by in the darkness, lit briefly by headlights and then plunging into the moonless night. "I've been thinking I might want to get back into stage work," he said quietly. "I miss the rush. The straight move through a scene, no reshoots, no special effects, no second chances, just the fuckup or the perfection."

"Adrenaline junkie," Viggo said lightly, glancing over and smiling a little.

"Oh, yeah," Orlando said, and suddenly he was unbuckling his seatbelt and leaning over and unzipping Viggo's fly.

"The fuck?"

"Adrenaline withdrawal," Orlando said, before dropping his head and dragging his tongue around the head of Viggo's cock. "The weekend was supposed to be —" he used his right hand, the one he wasn't propping himself up over the gearshift on, to press on the skin just below and behind Viggo's cock, "risky and exciting," and he let his whole mouth enclose the tip, and then pulled back and up, "and no one even looked cross-eyed at us." He blew a long stream of cool air onto Viggo's dampened flesh, and flicked his tongue, once, twice. "Even if it is too dark out for anyone," and he nipped carefully at Viggo's thigh, tugging on the hair with his teeth, "to see us."

He sucked hard for a moment, as best he could at the awkward angle, tracing a pattern with his tongue.

"Besides, I did promise you blowjobs on demand," he said, and mouthed Viggo's balls carefully for a bare few seconds, "and I don't feel I fulfilled the deal."

"No one saw us," Viggo managed to say, gripping the steering wheel tightly, "because we didn't leave the room, at your insistence. And this isn't jesus."

"You were saying?"

"Do that again, and I'll crash the car," Viggo said. "But god, do that again."

Orlando laughed, and while that wasn't what he had done before, it was better, he thought, given that Viggo pulled over and laced his fingers into Orlando's hair. He didn't crash the car.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is drunkeness. And sex.

"Free at last!" Orlando called. "Thank God Almighty, I'm free at last!"

"You are not oppressed, shut up!" Henry said, leaning around the hallway door.

"The fuck are you doing here?" Orlando blurted, clapping a hand over his mouth as soon as he'd said it. "I mean —"

"You mean, aren't I supposed to be off somewhere causing mayhem like a normal teenager?" Henry grinned and disappeared back through the doorway. "Dean's got a new motorcycle, okay, it's like third-hand, and he wants me to come with him to pick it up. I need a leather jacket. Can I have yours?"

"No, it wouldn't fit you," Orlando said automatically, as he dropped his sunglasses and keys into the dark purple bowl in the front hallway niche, "and your dad's going to go spare when you say the words 'third-hand motorbike' and 'Dean' in the same sentence."

"Oh Jesus, don't," Henry said, his voice muffled. "I already got the safety lecture."

Orlando sat on the kitchen table, propping his feet on the rungs of the ladder-back chairs. He nudged a stack of newspapers away from his hip and folded his hands under his chin; Viggo always mocked him for enjoying playing parent so much, but Henry was good about putting up with it. "Ah, but your dad's not been on a motorbike in nearly twenty years."

"And you have?" Henry gave him a suspicious glance before returning his attention to the refrigerator.

"Hi, have we met? I'm Orlando Bloom. I do reckless, stupid things with my body for breakfast."

"That's a really lame pick-up line," Henry said, shutting the fridge door. He leaned against it, and winced as a magnet dug into his back, pulling one of the chairs towards himself and straddling it backwards. "Besides, you don't, not anymore."

"True, true. But I am a font of wisdom about reckless, stupid bodily activities. "

"Don't encourage him," Viggo said, as he came in through the back door, his hands, feet, and knees muddy. The light outside was a pale mauve. "You're late."

"Johnny's iPod ran out of power," Orlando explained, "and he can't use mine." Johnny was notoriously picky about his mental soundtrack, and he had been honestly appalled at the playlist Orlando had—the Bob Dylan bootlegs were the only item that didn't get at least a raised eyebrow.

"He thinks he's oppressed," Henry said.

"He's going to be," Viggo replied, "he's not going to get laid if he —"

"Dad!"

Orlando cackled. "I am oppressed! See? I have to deal with not one but two Mortensens at the same time. No one else suffers as I do."

"That's a privilege, not a punishment," Viggo said, nudging the faucet handle with his elbow and rinsing the dirt off his hands. He flicked the water droplets at Henry, who swatted at his shoulder, and Orlando laughed.

"Americans have such a violent culture," he said, and jumped off the table, darting out of the kitchen and going up the staircase two steps at a time, his feet thudding into the wood in a rhythm as regular as his heartbeat.

"Twenty minutes!" Viggo shouted after him, and then turned his attention to his son.

It was more like thirty minutes before Orlando was done packing, but it was okay, because Henry had spent nearly fifteen minutes arguing with his father over whether Dean could be trusted on a motorcycle at all, much less a third-hand one, and another ten splitting hairs over the exact meaning of safe, eventually drifting into a discussion of the Patriot Act, and that was when Orlando came back in and pointed out that Viggo's duffel bag was nowhere in evidence and did Viggo really want to wander around vineyards looking like one of the grapepickers?

Apparently not; he was wearing a violet silk shirt when Orlando woke up the next morning. From the waist up, he looked entirely presentable and normal, cuffs turned back to expose his wristwatch, clean-shaven and hair only minimally messy; below the waist, he was entirely nude.

"Uhm," Orlando said, and yawned.

"You mumbled?"

"Sharef," Orlando replied, and rolled over and pulled the pillow over his head.

"You're awake, I know you are."

The pillow made a few inarticulate grunts.

"C'mon, it's gorgeous out," Viggo said, walking over to the bed to tug on the covers. "Wake up." The pillow squirmed underneath the blanket, and the blanket appeared to undergo an internal query as to whether ingesting pillows was a very good idea. "No, I mean, awake with your eyes open and standing up and everything, Orlando."

The blanket moaned. The pillow was not agreeing with its digestive system.

"We're at a vineyard," Viggo said, as he started poking the lumps in the bed. "You can start drinking almost as soon as you get up."

The bed spat out one Orlando Bloom, unshaven, eyes unfocused, and with his boxers nearly off. He looked as though drinking was, to put it kindly, what had put him to bed.

"Almost," Viggo added hastily.

"I hate you," Orlando said, although without any real rancor, "but not as much as I hate mornings."

"Well, at least it isn't a morning after," Viggo said.

"After what?" Orlando asked, scratching his stomach. "Din't have dinner. Couldn't have afters, not without dinner. Christ, I need a piss." He wandered vaguely away from the bed, nearly smacked into the coffee table, and fumbled his way into the bathroom, leaving the door open behind him.

"There's pineapple on the sideboard," Viggo said, wincing as he heard various thuds — knee, sink, towel bar, elbow — from the bathroom. Orlando was always clumsiest in the morning; he'd once said that he was worse when he was away from home, and Viggo didn't like even to think of that. "And yogurt. And granola."

"Real food," Orlando called. The sound of the faucet made his voice sound liquid. "I'm hungry."

"Then you shouldn't be in California," Viggo said, and he started piling pineapple on a plate; he seemed not to be preparing it as food but architecture, balancing the chunks in cantilevers and columns of fruit-rings.

"Neither should you," Orlando pointed out as he came back in and flopped onto the couch, his face dripping. "You ate roadkill, Viggo."

"Yep."

"Oh, shut up. I cannot cope with you being zen at this ungodly hour."

"It's nearly ten."

"Ungodly hour," Orlando repeated firmly. Viggo nodded, even though Orlando's eyes were shut. "I hate mornings."

They didn't start drinking until the afternoon. That was only because Orlando didn't wake up properly until almost noon — he faked it pretty well, a reporter never would have picked up on it (the article would have read Bloom's trademark jitteriness is nearly gone; he has become a calm, centered man who speaks carefully, hesitating between words, catching his lower lip between his teeth while he searches for the right way to phrase a remark. There are still traces of the endearing, clumsy boy that teenage girls swooned over four years ago, when he nearly tips over a carafe of spring water and when he catches himself before swearing, but Orlando Bloom has grown up.), but Viggo knew the difference between Orlando awake and asleep, and knew the line between the two states.

He liked to think that he knew Orlando in every state possible, but knew that it couldn't be true. Orlando did not only exist as Viggo saw him; perhaps Viggo knew him in more states than anyone else (almost certainly, he thought, literally, remembering their first, winding drive to Idaho, and the nights in motels on the outskirts of North Bumfuck), perhaps his mother or sister did (Viggo had never, for example, seen Orlando as consumed by pain as he must have been after surgery), but regardless, he did not, could not, possess Orlando utterly.

They more than made up for lost time that evening, and couldn't find their way back to their room by midnight.

The vineyard was just up the terraced hill from the lodge, and they had taken a second bottle with them; by the time they reached the car park, it had been left in a trash can and Orlando had tucked the cork into his pocket—"for to taunt Keira with," he'd explained.

"No, no, no," Orlando said. "It's this, this bird, see."

"Kay," Viggo said agreeably, looking carefully straight ahead of him, to avoid watching his feet; the ground felt as though it was careening about, but it was somehow worse to watch his legs grow longer and shorter erratically.

"'M Orlando," he corrected. "Who's Kay?"

"Dunno. Your new girlfriend?"

"That's Kate," Orlando said. "And she's the same one as before. I mean. I mean, she's not my girlfriend. People think she's my girlfriend. But."

"Perception is reality," Viggo said.

"Yeah, but she's just this girl. Kate. She does the thing. I mean. Where she does what she does, and I do what I do, and we do what we do, and it's all, it's all okay, cause she's her, and I don't have to do what I don't want to do, except, like, pretending to. So it's okay."

"You're really drunk," Viggo said.

"So're you," Orlando pointed out. "Hey, lookit, that car's purple! I never saw a purple car before."

"Purple's a fun word," Viggo said, following Orlando as he navigated the narrow gap between two eighteen-wheelers. "Like spoon."

"Spoon spoon spoon spoon," Orlando said as he reached the purple car.

"Spooooooooon," Viggo said, and sat down on the hood. "Spoon."

"Purple spoon!" Orlando shouted. "We are purple spoons!" He giggled and sprawled full-length onto Viggo's lap, his head thudding gently into the purple car's hood. "Purple spooooooon."

"God, we're wasted," Viggo sighed. "Purple purple purple."

"We're purple?" Orlando asked, squinting up at him in the light of the parking lot. The trucks cast them into shadow, but Viggo could still see the fine hairs on Orlando's chin, the beginnings of his Pirates goatee, and he could very definitely see the tip of Orlando's tongue as he licked at the corners of his mouth. He watched it carefully, its delicate movements, for a moment longer, and wrenched his gaze back to Orlando's eyes, which had fallen shut.

"Nnnnnno," he said, trying to remember what Orlando had said. "We're spoons. We fit, like spoons, intralal, intrel, you know, the curves and angles. And all. The wossname."

"Sex," Orlando agreed.

"Wasn't what I meant," Viggo said, "but yeah. Sex. The way we fit. The bits. That fit. You know."

"Un-hunh."

"You 'sleep?" Viggo rested his open palm on Orlando's stomach, flat under his shirt, and watched how the shadows in the hollows of his throat and collarbone shifted with his breathing.

"Nuh-unh. Just fucking horny. Wanna fuck?"

"What?"

"Your bits," Orlando explained, fumbling, trying to find his fly. "My bits. Fit. Fuck me." His hands had ended up under Viggo's shirt, but holding them up seemed to be too much effort; he left them fall to Viggo's waist, and curved his fingers around the bones of Viggo's hips, and wriggled his ass. "C'mon."

"Jesus," Viggo groaned.

This was not at all like their first encounter, their first kiss, which had been entirely sober, albeit in the car park of a pub that Dom had dragged them all to; Viggo had stuck to Coke, explaining that he had stunt work to do the next day, and Orlando had nursed a single pint all night, pointing out that he'd come to set hungover a few too many times for comfort. This was not at all like that, when both of them had been so tightly strung with hidden desire that Orlando had sat and watched Viggo, his eyes wide, his body absolutely still, and Viggo had been twitchy with nervous energy.

But the desire was the same, although deeper, more finely tuned, the hyperkinetic awareness of blood in the veins.

Viggo bent to kiss Orlando, his mouth sloppy and wet; he misjudged the distance between them and their teeth clashed together before he readjusted and tilted his head. Orlando hummed low in his throat, and ground his ass down. "Jesus," Viggo said again.

"Come onnnnn," Orlando moaned. His hands were out of Viggo's pants now, and Viggo was sorry about that; he liked Orlando touching him. Orlando should always touch him, he decided, and reached for Orlando's wrists, intending to put them back on his skin, under his shirt, in his boxers, anywhere, but Orlando was no longer on his lap. "What," he said, and shook his head.

"Up," Orlando said. He was standing, even if slightly tilted in a way that suggested the ground and he were not on speaking terms at the moment. His trousers were caught at his knees, and when he tried to lift a foot to kick them off, he wobbled alarmingly. "Um. Up," he repeated, and leaned forward to steady himself on the car's hood. This had the advantage of making him arch his back, and Viggo reached out to trace the cleft of his exposed ass with his fingers. His skin was warm and soft and pale in the night air, and Orlando made a strangled sound deep in his throat. "What part," he demanded, "of up didn't you get?"

"I am up," Viggo said, pointing at his crotch and giggling.

"Not," Orlando said, "just your dick. You up. Fucking me. Christ."

"Oh," Viggo said, and heaved himself to his feet.

This was nothing like the first time; which hadn't progressed beyond a kiss — well, several kisses, several very long but still chaste kisses, and some groping that would have been possible to explain away as Orlando's habit of touching anyone within reach, and a few gasps, and one or two nips of teeth. This was nothing like that; this was careless and messy, this was Orlando groaning when Viggo curled a hand around his hip and dropping his head to brace himself against the car, this was familiar, the silky heat as Viggo's pressed his finger in carefully, although something felt different from what had become familiar, and he cocked his head and curled his finger to see what wasn't what he had become accustomed to.

Orlando shivered, although the night was warm, and Viggo realized what the difference was. "No lube," he said, his voice doleful.

"Ah, Christ," Orlando said. "Pocket. Just hurry."

It took Viggo a few minutes; he had to check all of the pockets, before finding the single blue packet that Orlando had tucked into the tiny change pocket on the right side of his trousers, and the little tab to tug on was small and stubborn enough to provide further delay, but he spilled half the contents over his fingers and started opening Orlando up.

When he eased himself in, Orlando was caught a little off-balance, and stumbled against the car. He cried out, and Viggo stopped. "No, christ, christ, keep going," Orlando gasped, and he did.

It was over much too quickly. Viggo found that he couldn't control himself and came hard, he wasn't sure how soon; time felt sticky and stretchy, like caramel or cotton candy. Sooner than he should have, he thought, even given how tight Orlando was from lack of preparation, and the dull, ringing thuds of their bodies against the car. He caught his breath as he began to slip out, loosening his grip on Orlando's hip. His fingers tingled and felt heavily numb, at the same time — the combination of the orgasm and the alcohol, he guessed, drawing air into his lungs as carefully as he could.

"Viggo," Orlando said. His legs were still spread, and his breathing was harsh.

Oops.

"Sorry," Viggo said, flexing his hands. He swept his thumbs down Orlando's spine, brushed his knuckles over the narrow scar, and nearly fell over when he went to kneel. "Okay, that won't work," he said, steadying himself with his palm flat on Orlando's ass.

Orlando moaned. "Please," he said, rocking his hips back. His voice was deep and rough, all the training he had gone through useless, and his desperation was clear in the way his chest was heaving and the way the word broke in the middle.

"I can't—" Viggo said. "Turn around." He let his hands rise over Orlando's skin and held him steady as he turned; the trousers still caught at his knees made it more difficult, but soon enough Orlando was leaning against the car's fender, only the skin of his thighs and lower belly exposed. His T-shirt was barely rucked up, the grey fabric low enough that there was a wet spot at the hem.

Orlando's mouth was open, and his eyes were unfocused. "God," he said, and let his head loll backwards, exposing the long line of his throat. "Fucking—touch me."

Viggo shook his head for a moment, and then stopped, when the world around him began to swim and wobble. "No," he said. "You."

Orlando understood, of course; he always did. He hitched himself up a little higher against the car, letting his ass rest against the cool metal, and slid one hand down his chest, bracing himself against the car with the other. His fingers rested briefly over his nipples, but only briefly; he didn't even bother touching his tattoo, but began to pull on his erection, wrapping his long fingers around it and sliding his palm up and down. He groaned, deep in his throat, wordlessly, and angled his hips.

"Please," he said again, opening his eyes, "god, I—" He turned his head into Viggo's touch when Viggo rested his fingers against his cheek, licking the palm, his breath warm.

"Want to watch," Viggo murmured.

Orlando couldn't answer, but let his eyes shut again and kept on moving his hand. He tried to lift the other hand, but nearly fell over, and he left it where it was. His fingers slipped lower, to grip the base of his cock and then cradle his balls, and he ran his thumb across the head of his cock.

He raised his hand, blindly reaching for Viggo, who caught his wrist, feeling the pulse in the veins. "You," he said again, and let go. Orlando let his hand rest against his lips for a moment, and then opened his mouth and slid his fingers inside.

Viggo moaned, watching Orlando's cheeks hollow and his lips grow shiny as he slid his fingers in and out. "Beautiful," he said, and Orlando smiled, letting his fingers slip out.

"So good," he mumbled as he reached downward again, and it took only a few more tugs for him to come, spilling over his hand, and his breath caught.

He looked debauched, sprawled bonelessly over the purple car's hood, barely undressed, thighs spread and mouth wet, the muscles of his belly fluttering a little. "So fucking good," he murmured, and opened his eyes, drawing air into his lungs with sharp pants.

Viggo slid his fingers through the mess on Orlando's stomach, and Orlando gripped his hand. He didn't even need to ask, and Viggo cleaned him up as best he could, kissing him in between swiping his tongue along Orlando's stomach.

This was much like the first time, when they had stood still in the car park of the pub, and simply stared at each other, and then Orlando had leaned in and kissed him again, soft and gentle. They hadn’t said anything, and Orlando had smiled. Viggo had felt his lips curve in instant, unquestioning answer, and Orlando had turned to his car and unlocked it.

Viggo drew a breath in, and hauled Orlando up; he swayed on his feet for a moment, but managed to stand. "Oh," he said, and they began to move haltingly toward the lodge.

They didn't close the curtains, and the suite faced east; when light began to seep in, at sunrise, Orlando woke first. He burrowed beneath the covers and squirmed in the space between Viggo's knees and his chest; his elbow jammed into Viggo's hip.

"Fuck off," Viggo grumbled and tried to push him away, but he just curled up in a tighter ball and wriggled closer. Viggo sighed, and draped one arm over his eyes and pressed one hand into the gap between Orlando's shoulder blades, and they fell back asleep.

It only took half an hour for Orlando to nearly suffocate, and he fought his way clear of the blankets. He squinched his eyes shut and covered his face with his hands while he stumbled over to the windows and twitched the drapes shut. "Ow," he mumbled, and winced at the vibrations in his skull.

Viggo mumbled something, and turned over. "Ow," Orlando said again, feeling a new, but wholly familiar, ache in his ass join the throbbing in his head and the dryness of his mouth. "Ow." He stopped and waited for memory to seep back in, and when it did, his eyes snapped open.

"Viggo?"

"Mmmm?"

"Did you fuck me on top of a car last night?"

Viggo lifted his arm and squinted to find Orlando in the dark room. His hair was clumped into tufts, and the way the cover draped over him would have been unacceptable for anything other than a NC-17 rating. "Yeah."

"Oh God." They looked at each other, and Orlando groaned, covering his face with a hand. "Fuck," he said, and sighed. Viggo grinned. "It's not funny," Orlando said.

"No, but it was pretty good sex, for being drunk," Viggo said.

"Not the point," Orlando said. "But yeah, it was."

"I don't think anyone saw us," Viggo said. "Come back to bed."


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is sex on the beach. But no alcohol.

Orlando swore. Several times. Loudly.

"That bad?" Viggo asked, turning the radio down. He didn't take his gaze from the road—the narrow hairpin turns would get them killed if he wasn't careful, and somehow, he did not think that the headline SECRET 'RINGS' LOVERS DIE IN CAR CRASH was the kind of obituary he wanted.

"Fuck," Orlando said. He shifted in his seat and hissed between his teeth.

Orlando had spent most of the last week locked in Studio B, doing a fight scene with Jack Davenport. Normally, that wouldn't have been a problem — most of his films, after all, had involved long, protracted battle sequences — but this one was supposed to be on a beach; and fighting on sand was a bitch of a proposition. It didn't help that Orlando was supposed to take the brunt of the fighting, nor did it help that three of the stunties had worked on 'Rings', and one on 'Kingdom' (Hollywood being an incestuous pit of sin, if not den of vice), and knew that Orlando could take a surprising amount of abuse.

The end result was an Orlando who was covered in bruises — bruises on top of bruises, really — and very, very sore, and it had probably been a mistake to let him fall asleep in the (tilted-back) shotgun seat. The bruises were only a minor inconvenience, and would fade in less than a week; the stiffness was slightly more troublesome, but would disappear with all the alacrity of youth as soon as they weren't aggravated constantly.

Some high-quality oxycodone would be a good idea, too.

"I'm guessing no surfing this weekend," Viggo said dryly.

"Oh, my god," Orlando said. "I don't think I can stand up." He closed his eyes again and concentrated on his breathing, each inhale a count of ten, each exhale a count of five. "God," he said a moment later.

"Want a massage later?"

"Please tell me this place has a spa?"

"Didn't you make the reservations?"

"Yes, over lunch. Listening to Johnny and Jack talk about — ow — seventeenth-century stockbroking scandals, trying not to get overheard by The Wrong People, meaning fucking everybody, and still speak at a volume that wouldn't translate to 'married man trying to cheat on wife number three with…'"

"Boytoy?" Viggo supplied.

"That would be me," Orlando replied with as much dignity as he could muster. "You're not that delusional, even after all the drugs."

"One flashback," Viggo muttered, glancing in the mirrors. "One, and I'll never live it down."

"One that I know of," Orlando said. "Point being, I wasn't paying attention to the list of services this place undoubtedly has."

"They have a personal surf-butler," Viggo supplied.

"The fuck?" Orlando opened his eyes, and winced. The late-afternoon sunlight had broken through the clouds, and Viggo had stolen his sunglasses at the beginning of the drive. Of course, he rather needed them, since he was the one behind the wheel, but those were his favorite sunglasses, the purple ones that made him look like a bug-eyed freak.

"Do I need to remind you that this whole lunatic escapade is your idea?"

"It's also my Oscar giftbag," Orlando pointed out. "Motherfucker, even my arse hurts. I could revoke it at any point."

"But then you'd be a pathetic, lonely, selfish bastard who doesn't get laid — in exotic locales — every weekend."

"Viggo, if you think we're having sex when I just want to moan in the bad way, you're fucking crazy."

"Poor you," Viggo said, reaching a hand out blindly. When the heel of his hands brushed against cloth, Orlando groaned.

"Seriously, Vig, that's right where the camera whacked into me yesterday."

"God, I can't even touch you," Viggo murmured, and jerked a little in surprise when Orlando's chilly fingers wrapped around his.

"You can touch me," he said. "Always. Just — stop when I say to, okay?"

"Have I ever not?"

"No," Orlando said. "Never." Silence fell, and Viggo drove into the darkening twilight one-handed. He had to pull his hand away to flick on the headlights, but he reached back toward Orlando as soon as he did.

"Want some music?" he asked eventually.

"Nah. Just sing to me?"

"You gonna sing harmony?"

"I'm not a hobbit on helium," Orlando retorted, making a face, although he knew Viggo wouldn't see it. He had mocked Elijah and Dom for months after they'd recorded their track on pandemonieumfromamerica, leaving phone messages for "Minnie" and "Mickey Mouse" at ungodly hours (although the ungodly hours were more related to time zone issues than any perverse desire to wake either of them up) — Elijah thought it was hilarious; Dom had threatened to castrate him if he woke Evi up 'one more time when she's feeling at peace with the world and far better shagged than you'll be if you do that again, you fuckhead!' "Please?"

"Did you think I was going to say no?" Viggo asked, and began humming a Spanish lullaby.

"S'it mean?" Orlando asked, trying valiantly to keep himself awake.

"Um." Viggo hummed a few more bars. "I don't really remember. Something about love, I think."

"Good enough for me," Orlando said, and turned his head, tugging Viggo's hand toward his mouth, brushing his mouth over Viggo's knuckles. "Love you."

Viggo started singing again, even more softly, and Orlando's grip slackened, the vibration of the car dancing along his muscles, and Viggo's voice smoothing the jagged edges of his skin and the nerves underneath. He didn't quite fall asleep, the ache in his muscles was too insistent for that, but neither was he fully awake when they pulled up at the St. Regis Monarch.

One of the people in his publicist's office had called ahead, and the suite's key had been left at the private desk. Orlando found that his hands were trembling when he went to slip the keycard into the door, and as soon as it was open, he held his hands in front of his face and stared at them, trying to make them steadier.

Viggo watched him for a moment, then dropped the bags on the floor. "Do you want your pills?" he asked. Orlando shook his head.

"Don't need them," he said.

The distinction between needing and wanting his painkillers was one they had struggled with in the beginning, and Orlando was hoping this would not be one of the times the argument would recur. The worst of it was that the discussions (they were not fights, they weren't) always took place, or at least began, when he was least equipped to deal with them.

"Okay," Viggo said, and Orlando let out a breath in relief. "Food?"

"Sure," Orlando said. "Order in?"

"Duh," Viggo said, in such a pitch-perfect imitation of Henry's voice that Orlando laughed.

"Please tell me you didn't stash him in your suitcase," he said as he flipped open the red leather folder on the table. The paper inside was the color of the skin between his fingers, and the ink was a deeper shade of the color of Viggo's eyes, he thought, and then laughed again.

"No. What is it?" Viggo said, letting his arm slip around Orlando's waist, careful not to put much weight on the bruises hidden beneath the dark green T-shirt. Orlando sighed and let his head tip over to rest on Viggo's shoulder; his neck cracked so alarmingly that Viggo jumped a bit and the point of bone in his shoulder thunked into Orlando's temple.

"Ow," he said. "Just being sentimental."

"You're overtired," Viggo said, licking a finger to turn the page. "Don't get anything that takes much chewing."

"Fuck you," Orlando said. "Hang on, flip back a page."

"That wasn't the menu."

"I can read, Viggo," Orlando said, and leaned away from the warm bulk of Viggo's body; for all that he had lost weight for Alatriste, and Orlando wasn't too pleased about being able to feel the contours of Viggo's ribs beneath his fingers, there was always a solidity about Viggo. Maybe it had to do with his calmness, a sort of placidity he carried with him, or maybe it was just that Orlando could summon memories of how Viggo's skin looked and felt, even feeling his body through cloth; maybe it was just that Orlando needed to know that Viggo always was going to be there, wherever there was. "Whatever," he murmured, so softly that he knew Viggo would barely hear it. "Spa," he explained as he skimmed the list of services the hotel offered. "Spas have masseuses."

"Ah," Viggo said, and lifted a hand to tap a finger on a line of text. "How's this?"

Orlando shrugged. "I'll talk to her," he said, finding the name of the spa director at the bottom of the page. "I'm sure she'll have suggestions. Maybe they've got someone who's used to working with injuries, or sport massage, or something."

Viggo turned a few more pages and found the menu, framed in a deckle border. They ate stretched out on the bed, plates balanced precariously on stomachs and smooth sections of the cover, and talked about the biography of Winston Churchill that Viggo had brought along, trying to remember if Churchill's father had had syphilis or not. Neither one of them bothered to go check.

The couscous was a little bit salty, Orlando declared, and he drank most of Viggo's beer. "Just because it's not yours doesn't mean you can't get drunk off it," Viggo pointed out, and Orlando grunted, but he put the glass down. He looked at the amber pill bottle on the bedside table, and Viggo pointedly examined a piece of kimchi.

He only swallowed one of the painkillers, but the slight shift in Viggo's expression at just that concession made him wonder what Viggo went through when he was away and mentioned he was hurting. He didn't like the idea of censoring himself when he talked to Viggo. But he couldn't have said if that thought, or the idea of taking pills he didn't need, was worse.

There were couscous grains scattered across his shirt; he had eaten with his eyelids at half-mast, and was slumped against a bolster. "Every time we get away from the bullshit," he mumbled.

"Yeah?"

"I'm in no condition to appreciate the lack of bullshit. God." His muscles still ached, and the studs in his spine were throbbing steadily. He opened his eyes and focused on Viggo, who was stabbing vaguely at his steamed zucchini. "I love you," he said. "And I'm fucking terrified that I'm not giving you enough, that I'm going to disappear on you, that I need too much, and I know it’s fucked up, but the only way I can talk about it is to be too tired to not talk about it."

"You have a Y chromosome," Viggo said. "We're not supposed to talk about shit like this."

"Metrosexual," Orlando said, leaning over to put his plate on the floor. He felt vaguely disappointed that Viggo hadn't even looked up, that the conversation apparently wasn't going to happen, and cravenly relieved about that as well. Apparently metrosexuality did not entirely diminish the influence of the Y chromosome.

"I'm too fucking old to redefine myself with slang."

"You've made a career of redefining yourself," Orlando pointed out.

Viggo put his fork down deliberately. "Orlando," he said, "I am gay. Not Madonna." He held Orlando's gaze a split second longer and they both began to laugh, which effectively ruined any chance of a serious discussion. Viggo, when he started laughing, was apt to burst out giggling anytime throughout the next two hours, and when Viggo laughed, Orlando couldn't do anything but bask in the warmth of the sound and (not very secretly) glory in the fact that Viggo Mortensen thought he was funny.

It was things like that he held to, during night shoots, two thousand miles away from home, and Keira had been fighting over her cell phone with her boyfriend. Viggo thinks I'm funny. Viggo kisses me and laughs into my mouth because we're playing a huge joke on everyone. Viggo loves me, for more than the damn eyelashes and the notch in my collarbone.

He held, that night, not only to that thought, but to Viggo himself, twining their legs together in the bed, resting his lips against the nape of Viggo's neck, and draping an arm over Viggo's waist. It was a damn good thing that spring had barely broken, because otherwise it would have been far too hot to sleep like that.

It might have been, but probably wasn't, a dream that Viggo had kissed him goodnight and said, softly, "I didn't fall in love with a rising star, I fell in love with you. Unless and until you change, I'm not going to let you lose me."

If that was a dream, it was the only one that night; when he woke up at eleven, his back still aching and his knees stiff, Viggo had left a note on the bedside table: Out looking for sea glass. You have a three-thirty massage scheduled, come find me on the beach after. Randolph Churchill did have syphilis, I checked.

How had Viggo known, when he had barely known himself, that what he needed was a few hours just to laze about? He considered breakfast, but tugged the blanket up around his shoulders again, and fell back asleep.

Any day you didn't get dressed until five-thirty was a good one, he thought, as he kicked off his flipflops to join Viggo on the beach. It had taken him a while to find Viggo — the Monarch's private beach was a lot more extensive than he'd thought, and it curved quite a lot, making finding one man on the expanse of sand a bitch of a proposition. He'd done it, though, and settled down next to Viggo.

He packed sand around his feet and ankles, patting it down solidly. "Mmm," he said. "Feels nice." He leaned back on his elbows and watched the surfers, snickering when one of them wiped out.

"Yeah?" Viggo said, propping himself up.

"What they do to calm horses down," Orlando said dreamily. "In the stalls. They pour sand in through the walls so it surrounds him, and he can't really move, but it's soothing. The pressure."

Viggo was silent, watching the surfers. He didn't see Orlando's grimace, as he ran his words through his head a second too late. "How do you know that?" he asked mildly.

"Read it somewhere," Orlando said, digging his fingers into the damp sand at his side. "Probably sometime in '98, during rehab. Had fuck-all to do, so I read, and when the meds made philosophy sound a little too reasonable, I read the most random shit you can imagine." Viggo grunted slightly. "Well, not you. You've got an imagination like a monkey crossbred with a BOD doll on crack. With rainbow Viking horns. And a hip flask."

Viggo turned his head and stared at him. "The massage was a good one, hunh?" he said.

"I fucking love endorphins," Orlando agreed.

The sunset lit the air hibiscus yellow and ruby; slowly the surfers straggled off as the sky and the water turned the same dark, haunting tint. Neither of them moved. The beach was private; no one would hurry them along; they could do as they pleased, within the resort's property.

Always within limitations, Orlando thought, and reached for Viggo's hand. He could do that here, and while it was nice, it would be nicer if he didn't have to choose his heres so carefully.

World peace would be nice, too.

Light drained over the horizon, slowly. Orlando sighed, and leaned forward, lengthening his back and twisting his neck.

"You all right?" Viggo asked.

"Yeah," Orlando said. It was getting cold, the damp air raising goosebumps on his skin, and the breeze off the water, always there at the ocean shore, was becoming stronger. But he didn't suggest they move, or leave.

He was comfortable enough. His feet were cold, and there was sand in his pants, and he still had bruises from the fight scene, and he was a little thirsty, but nothing was really troubling. He was, indeed, all right. He was better than all right.

"God, it's so empty," Viggo murmured, looking out over the vast space of the ocean.

"Nah," Orlando said. "We just can't see the, you know, the life underneath, all the exciting action."

"Ever looked at pond water through a microscope?" Viggo asked. Orlando shook his head.

"Dropped sciences after GCSE," he said, and started digging his feet out of the sand. "Why?"

"All the, what's the name, amoeba. Making love. Having amoeba babies. Amoeba divorces, probably. They think it's all very exciting and important. We don't." Orlando tossed a handful of sand at him.

"Speaking of making love," he said.

Viggo wrapped his fingers around Orlando's wrist. "Wanna play amoeba?" he asked.

"That's got to be the worst pick-up line I've ever heard," Orlando said, but he was grinning, his teeth the color of the foam on the waves, and turned his hand to lace his fingers through Viggo's. "Race you to the tidemark," he said, and dropped Viggo's hand to bolt across the sand, jumping over the dark, wet rocks.

Viggo didn't even bother. "I am not testosterone-driven," he said with dignity when he caught up to Orlando. "I do not feel the need to prove my masculinity with a footrace."

"Oh, good," Orlando said. "Then you won't mind if I fuck you." Before Viggo could say anything, Orlando pulled him close and pressed his thigh between Viggo's legs. "Want you begging," he said, and closed his teeth on Viggo's lower lip.

Viggo skipped begging and went straight to inarticulate whimpers, and Orlando leaned forward to push him back onto the sand. It wasn't very hard — there are good points about getting your first kiss at age eight, and lots of practice thereafter. One of the best points is acquiring the ability to weaken Viggo Mortensen's knees with your tongue.

They fell onto the hard sand, Viggo's breath coming out with a whoosh, but Orlando leaned his full weight on him, and he didn't seem to care much about oxygen. His mouth was swollen when Orlando lifted his head and grinned triumphantly. "Yeah," Orlando breathed, and shifted so that their cocks were aligned through the thin layers of summerweight cotton.

Viggo moaned deep in his throat. "Yeah?" Orlando repeated, and Viggo opened his eyes. The light was too dim to read their expression, but the glitter in them was almost feverish. He might not have actually been saying please, but everything about him communicated it.

Orlando had been considering being merciless, saying maybe, saying you get what I give you, but he found himself kissing Viggo again, and the kiss was overwhelming, hard, possessive. He was close to begging himself, and he fumbled Viggo's fly open. "Yeah," Orlando breathed, and brushed his fingers along the flap of khaki, dusting off the sand clinging to them, and sucked on them for as long as he could bear. Viggo hissed once, and his mouth was soft and wet when Orlando leaned down to kiss him.

He kept it short and almost chaste, but Viggo's body shifting restlessly under him was enough of a prompt to pull away and finish wetting his fingers. Viggo had not, by any means, been quiet as he watched Orlando mouth at his skin, but neither had he said anything.

It was close enough to begging, Orlando decided, and he wasn't sure how much more of this he could endure himself. He reached down and curled his fingers around Viggo's erection, feeling his knuckles against his own skin, and managed to keep the rhythm of his strokes steady and, more impressively, himself in check until Viggo's eyes had widened in what looked almost like panic. Viggo blurted something that sounded a little like "Ohfuckorlando," and that was his undoing.

"You're one hell of a Burt Lancaster," Viggo murmured eventually, when his heartbeat had steadied, running sandy hands into Orlando's hair.

"Prettier than Deborah Kerr," Orlando said, nuzzling his head deeper into the join of Viggo's neck and shoulder.

"From here to eternity," Viggo said softly into his hair.

"To wherever it may lead," Orlando agreed; it should have been clichéd, they'd said it so many times, and it was, but as they lay there, it meant just as much as it had years before, when they had been damp from a river instead of the Pacific. A wave came up suddenly and doused them both; Viggo spat an arched stream of water into the air, and they both began to laugh, sticky and sandy and damp, until it was entirely dark, and they could stumble up the beach, through the golf course, avoiding the sand traps, and past the fountain, lit in emerald and violet, to their suite and go to sleep.


End file.
